This episode marks the first mention of the Romulans in The Next Generation.
This was the first Star Trek episode to have the Prime Directive in its modern incarnation. While it had been mentioned a few times previously in the series (most notably in Justice (1987)), the writers had been working by the version from Star Trek (1966), which only applied to pre-warp civilizations. With this story, Gene Roddenberry rewrote the Prime Directive into a doctrine of total non-interference with the affairs of other species, irrespective of technology level.
Patrick Stewart had previously given the writers and producers his disagreements with elements of other episodes, leading Gates McFadden to think she was welcome to do the same. When she complained that the episode struck her as sexist, the writers waited until the end of the season (when Gene Roddenberry left the show and appointed a new show-runner) to declare that they would also quit the show unless McFadden was fired. As a result, she was written off the show for the second season.
In Patrick Barry's original story, Beata was named Victoria and she imprisoned Riker after he directly addressed her and then touched her hand. Tasha Yar stunned Riker to prevent him being killed and then took over command of the away team. In this version, Captain Picard was the only person aboard the Enterprise-D who was affected by the virus. The male slaves started a revolution, led by Lucas Jones who was killed.
Some of the production crew subsequently thought poorly of this episode. Executive producer Maurice Hurley described it as "Terrible. Just terrible. One of the ones you'd just as soon erase". Producer Herbert Wright felt that the "sexual places it was dragged to were absurd".